The availability of media objects, such as pictures, photographs, videos, music files, text files, emails, and the like, has vastly increased over time. As a result, individuals are increasingly accessing, creating and/or storing large quantities of such media objects, as well as other types of objects, using their user devices (e.g., cellular telephones, personal digital assistants (PDAs), pagers, personal computers (PCs) or laptops, televisions, set-top boxes, cameras, camcorders, Global Positioning System (GPS) receivers, visual radio devices, music players, game consoles, video/audio players, etc.). Due to the limited size of the display screens on typical user devices, however, metadata associated with each object accessed, created and/or stored by a user cannot be displayed to the user at the same time as the object itself. Metadata, or data about data, is information about an object (e.g., a media object) or file that can be located separately from the object or as part of the object. Examples of different types of metadata include information about the developer of the object or the party transmitting the object (e.g., the party sending an email or text message), the time or date the object was created or transmitted, information on any modifications to the object, or information regarding the type of object.
Because of display screen size limitations, objects are typically presented to a user as thumbnails or with only a brief title string and/or date. In order for the user to view other metadata associated with the object, he or she is required, for example, to open a properties dialogue associated with the object. This limitation makes it difficult for a user to locate objects having certain specific qualities that the user is interested in. The ability to quickly and easily locate one or more objects of interest becomes especially beneficial to a user when one considers the increased volume of media, and other, objects available to the user for browsing. For example, the user may have hundreds of photographs either stored on his or her user device or accessible to the user device, and he or she may want to view only photographs that were taken in Venice, Italy or only photographs taken on a specific date. Currently the user would be forced to access each object (e.g., photograph) individually, open a properties dialogue for that object, and then, based on a manual investigation of the metadata displayed in the properties dialogue, determine whether the object meets the particular characteristics he or she is interested in. This can be very tedious and time consuming.
A need, therefore, exists for an improved method of browsing the volumes of objects, such as media objects, available to a user that enables the user to more quickly and easily locate one or more objects of particular interest to the user.